


made to be legends

by amosanguis



Series: creature AUs [34]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: BAMF Billy Bones, Billy Saves Charles, Character Study, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Mythical Creature Billy Bones, Non-Linear Narrative, title from a song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 12:19:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13880733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amosanguis/pseuds/amosanguis
Summary: Billy was created from the sea foam and a south wind—





	made to be legends

**Author's Note:**

> \--Title from "Rise Up" by Zayde Wølf  
> 

Billy was created from the sea foam and a south wind—

 

Billy slips or maybe Flint lets go.

Definitely, the ocean swallows him down and Billy lets it – he doesn’t fight the currents as he sheds his human skin, shaking it off with a ripple of magic as he stretches his legs and swim-runs down to the ocean floor. There, he spends the night traveling the current.

He speaks with God-and-Father Neptune, plays with his brothers, ready almost to forget the surface world. But his curiosity gets the best of him and there was yet one human he wasn’t quite ready to leave to Time.

So, Billy dons his human skin once again and, once night has settled on Nassau’s beaches and even the drunks have passed to sleep, Billy walks out of the water. He steals clothes and boots and begins to search.

But, before he can find the one he’s looking for, dawn breaks and the _Walrus_ pulls into the bay.

 

—he is among Neptune’s favored; he is the fastest and strongest of his brothers, calling up a storm with just the shake of his head and stamp of his hoof against the reef—

 

“You can help us.”

“I can,” Billy turns his gaze from the too-still sails, says to Flint, “but I won’t.”

Billy turns away and Flint, deep into thirst- and hunger-begotten madness, yells after him, “You can help us.”

Billy turns back, says, “I warned you. Days ago – I warned you where this path would take you. I told you again when you ordered us into the storm that I would not help you on the other side of it. Now you must face the consequences.”

“You hate me, I get it,” Flint snarls, stalking up on Billy as if Billy weren’t the more dangerous of them. “But if you want to kill me, then just kill _me_. Don’t take it out on the crew.”

Billy doesn’t even blink as he says, again, “I warned you.”

The few of his shipmates that have fallen near enough to them to hear the conversation have stirred, their tired and glinting eyes shifting to take Billy in as Flint’s words reach them. Many of the crew were too far gone – even if Billy had called up a wind, none here would have the strength to work the sails.

So Billy turns away from Flint again, content to let this all play out as God-and-Father Neptune wishes.

 

—he is never harnessed (not even to his God-and-Father’s chariot) and he is never ridden (not even by his God-and-Uncles who claim to be the masters of the winds and of all horses, they never even dare to come in close)—

 

 Billy slides into Charles Vane’s bed readily, easily.

And there are moments, when the light catches him just right, that Billy’s sure Charles can see him for what he truly is. But if he ever does, he never says – just grips Billy tighter, jerks him harder, kisses him rougher – and, gods, if Billy had the option, they’d never leave this room.

Billy wonders if Charles sees it as a point of pride, bedding another captain’s boatswain.

“A small one,” Charles concedes, still trying to catch his breath as he collapses in a sweaty heap next to Billy. “This is still mostly me trying to convince you to leave Flint altogether.”

Billy huffs a small laugh, but shakes his head. Then he looks at Charles, runs his thumb over Charles’s bottom lip. “Would that I had seen you first, instead of Flint.”

“Is that really all that it would have taken?”

Billy doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

 

—he has no master, suffers no yoke, and _yet_ —

 

Charles is captured and a storm strikes Nassau and every British ship in the bay sinks.

There are rumors that a white stallion was seen racing along the beach, lightning in his tail and in his mane, before he ran over the water, conjuring waves up behind him that smashed the ships he chose. There were just enough people telling the story that Charles, hearing it even through his cold stone walls, was beginning to wonder.

Charles is sentenced and a hurricane batters Nassau for three days.

This time, the stallion was said to have been up in the clouds, screaming and circling the governor’s mansion, the building itself suffering several lightning strikes, a caved-in roof, and flooding. The governor was wounded, but announced that after a short day’s rest, he would see to it that those convicted of piracy would pay for it.

The day Charles is supposed to swing, a tornado rips apart the jail and Charles walks away without a scratch.

 

—and _yet_ , Billy finds he’s happy enough to hand his heart over to this man, to a killer of killers; God-and-Father Neptune, Billy knows, is laughing at him with each distant rumble of thunder—

 

“Hold on tight,” Billy says, then there’s a ripple of magic and he’s shedding his human skin.

Taller than the largest waves and just as unforgiving, he’s but gentle as he goes to a knee and urges Charles onto his back – his first and only rider (grumbling, “I can’t believe I fucked a horse”) – before he _runs_.

None dare to stand in his way.

 

—God-and-Father takes to Charles Vane with ease and, with a soft kiss, twines Charles’s legs together, granting him black scales and fins and webbing between his fingers and gills along his neck and the speed to keep up with even Billy; then Billy takes Charles down to the deep and, laughing as he changes his form to match Charles’s, they race each other through the currents.

 

End.


End file.
